Robert Louis Stevenson was describing one of his professors that he admired most. He said, "Fleeming would never allow you to think that you were living, if there were not, somewhere in your life, some touch of heroism, to do or to endure. This was his rarest quality and far on in middle age the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young man's. He loved the harsh voice of 'duty' like a call to battle. He loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly virtue, everything that lifts us above the battle where we eat or the bed we sleep upon. He loved his virtues to be practical, his heroes to be great eaters of beef. A fine buoyant sense of life and of man's unequal character ran trough all his thoughts. He could not tolerate the spirit of the flattery; being what we are, he wished us to see others with a generous eye of admiration, not with the smallness of the seeker after faults."